Zorko’s Arcane Appraisals
The Vault of Winds
"Welcome," Zorko whispered, as though worried the walls might respond. He stepped into the Vault of Winds like a man re-entering an argument he hadn’t finished. The room curved inward like a clenched breath, carved from wind-smoothed stone and lined with shelves of feathers, bones, and glass eggs that shimmered faintly in the air’s charged hush.
The orb hovered at the center, pulsing low and steady. A feather on the top shelf trembled, though there was no draft. Something ticked, not a clock, but the memory of thunder trying to make up its mind.
Zorko approached the central pedestal: scorched velvet, edges singed, waiting for something it had not been promised.
He raised his phoenix feather. It sparked. The orb flickered. Zorko did not blink.
"This," he said, sweeping the feather in a reverent arc, "is where forgotten weather comes to roost."
His voice echoed into the dome, caught briefly in a swirl of old storm-static before falling back to him, slightly disappointed.
He turned, arms wide.
"Today, we are not appraising an object. We are confronting a question: What happens when a storm is born sideways?"
The feather sparked again, brighter this time, and a curl of smoke rose from the edge of his sleeve. Zorko didn’t flinch.
"The guest approaches with a burden," he said solemnly. "And within that burden, an egg. Not of shell or yolk, but something older. Heavier. Weather compressed into the shape of regret."
He stepped closer to the pedestal, eyes faintly glowing beneath his hood.
"The Thunderbird does not lay often. It is not maternal. It drops legacy from cloud to earth and lets the wind do the rest."
The velvet rustled.
"The egg has not hatched," Zorko murmured. "It may never hatch. Some storms exist only to be carried."
He touched the pedestal.
A static pop jumped to his finger. The feather flared red. Zorko twitched, staggered, and spun elegantly toward the orb.
"The appraisal," he declared breathlessly, "has begun."
The orb flickered once in sympathy. A second time, in warning.
Then the door creaked.
But no one stepped through.
Not yet. The wind got here first.
It curled through the vault like a slow exhale, disturbing none of the feathers and all of the tension. A faint scent followed, herbs, salt, and wet stone after rain. The orb pulsed, not in alarm, but recognition.
Tabitha stepped through the arched doorway like someone entering a room they’d already left behind. Her robes moved like damp silk, green barely visible in the torchlight. Her skin held a subtle tint, neither quite human, nor quite not. Her eyes took in everything, responded to nothing.
Zorko bowed immediately, a hand theatrically to his chest.
"Welcome, healer of the marsh, songless shaman, echo of wetter centuries. Your presence is a weather event."
Tabitha did not bow. She carried a bundle wrapped in storm-silk, careful and quiet. It sparked in her hands like it had opinions.
She said nothing as she crossed the floor. The orb dimmed in her wake. A feather from a high shelf drifted loose but did not fall. It hovered, twitching faintly.
Zorko extended a gloved hand toward the bundle. “May I...?”
“No,” Tabitha said simply.
She set it down herself. Velvet met silk. The room leaned.
The orb flickered. The egg twitched.
It was silver-gold, veined with green, and didn’t reflect light so much as flatten it. Even still, even silent, it felt awake.
Zorko’s hand hovered inches from it, reverent. Then a spark jumped to his knuckle.
He yelped, spun back, and flung his feather like a ward.
"Ah! Immediate response! Clearly volatile. Possibly prophetic." He cleared his throat, straightened, and turned to the orb like it had all been part of the ritual.
"Thunderbird egg," he said grandly. "Birthed by cloudfire. Shaped by sky-logic. Nestled in the crook of regret."
The egg pulsed softly. Zorko winced.
"Some say these eggs never hatch," he continued. "That they’re laid as warnings. Or apologies. Or... batteries."
He circled the pedestal. Tabitha watched, not unkindly, but with a stillness that seemed carved from stone.
Zorko gestured to the orb. "Observe the reaction. The charge, the resistance. The artifact is clearly offended. Or flattered. Hard to say."
Tabitha’s voice was quiet enough that it had to be listened to.
"That’s not where storms come from."
Zorko froze.
The orb flickered.
A low wind passed through the vault, lifting nothing but touching everything.
Zorko turned slowly, as if the statement had been a spell.
“...Pardon?”
Tabitha didn’t repeat it.
The egg pulsed again. The feathers began to hum.
And Zorko, undeterred but slightly scorched, took one eager step closer.
He drew a breath, the kind taken before leaping into a metaphor canyon with no rope.
He circled the pedestal, the phoenix feather arcing beside him like a theatrical conductor’s baton, although slightly more judgmental.
“The orb is unsettled,” he announced. “The feathers tremble. The artifact sparks without provocation. These are not coincidences. These are symptoms.”
The egg gave a tiny crackle. Zorko pointed triumphantly.
“There. A murmur of defiance. A whisper of unreleased cataclysm.”
Tabitha stood silent, her hands at her sides. One sleeve held tiny stitched patterns, not decorative, but intentional. Runic. Protective.
Zorko leaned in close, nose nearly brushing the shell. The feather dipped with him.
“This,” he declared, “is not simply a thunderbird egg. No. This is the unhatched apology of the storm itself. A spherical confession. A sealed tantrum from the sky.”
He snapped his fingers. A brass caliper floated from a side shelf. He clamped it gently around the egg, then recoiled as it discharged a sharp snap into his palm.
“Gkkh! Aggressive!” he croaked, flinging the tool over his shoulder. “Fascinatingly aggressive. As expected of an egg laid by lightning.”
The orb pulsed in slow disapproval. A feather wilted slightly.
Zorko pressed both palms to his head, pacing now.
"Consider, a creature born midair. Its wings, stormfronts. Its gaze, barometric. And this," he gestured at the egg, "this is its pause. The held breath before skyfire. A relic of pressure, memory, and revenge."
Tabitha tilted her head. “It’s not angry,” she said. “It’s remembering.”
Zorko stopped mid-step, mid-rant.
The egg pulsed, deep, slow, soft.
He turned slowly, expression straining to remain majestic.
“Remembering,” he echoed. “Of course. Memory is the first thunder. That resonates.”
He pointed his feather at the orb.
“The artifact reacts to her, not because she’s the carrier, but because she’s the cause. Her presence awakens the yolk. The storm recognizes its sibling.”
The feather sparked again.
Zorko recoiled. “Or perhaps I have been chosen.”
The orb dimmed in protest.
“Unlikely,” Tabitha said.
The feathers trembled. The egg twitched.
Somewhere in the walls, a soft, slow creaking began. Not wood, not stone. A hinge in the air. A door in the myth.
Zorko’s arms spread, feather sizzling, his sleeve still faintly smoking.
“It remembers. And now, so must we.”
The creaking grew louder. Not mechanical, but inevitable.
A stone panel sighed open with the slowness of bureaucracy. No ceremony. Just air giving up.
Uvlius stepped through like a man returning to a room he left in disgust twenty minutes ago.
Zorko froze mid-drama.
Tabitha didn’t turn.
Uvlius descended three steps into the vault, robes untouched by the static dancing around the pedestal. He carried a book that looked like it disapproved of being opened.
“Incorrect,” he said.
Zorko’s feather dipped. “Ah,” he murmured. “A correction arrives, wrapped in a librarian’s patience.”
Uvlius crossed to the egg, leaned over it, and exhaled softly. The shell shimmered faintly.
He looked at Tabitha. Nodded. “You again.”
She gave the smallest nod in return. It felt old.
Zorko cleared his throat. “Uvlius of the Belfry, chronicler of the unspeakable and indexer of the unindexed. Have you come to shed light on the hatchling of hurricanes?”
Uvlius ignored him.
He placed a hand on the pedestal. “Thunderbird egg. Unfertilized. Crafted instinct vessel. Likely harvested near the Delta during the last atmospheric bloom.”
Zorko blinked. “Unfertilized?”
“The shell collects memory,” Uvlius said. “Not life. Used by matriarchs to encode migratory winds, lightning techniques, pressure patterns. Flightpath storage. Compressed weather instincts.”
He glanced at Tabitha again.
“In some cases, it reacts to sympathetic cycles. Reincarnated threads. Recurring burdens.”
Zorko opened his mouth, realized he had nothing dramatic to say, and closed it.
Uvlius eyed the orb. “It’s not a storm. It’s a syllabus.”
Tabitha stepped forward. “It started twitching last week.”
Uvlius nodded. “Your pattern’s syncing again.”
Zorko coughed, sleeve still smoking. “So... the artifact isn’t dangerous?”
“It remembers how to be dangerous,” Uvlius replied. “That’s not the same.”
The orb pulsed once, bright, warm, deliberate.
Uvlius turned to go. “Do not chant near it. It gets nostalgic.”
He paused at the archway. “And don’t try to hatch it. It will only show you what you already know.”
Then he stepped into the wall, which closed behind him like a filing cabinet you regret opening.
Zorko lowered his feather. Slowly. Carefully. Thoughtfully.
The egg shimmered.
Then settled.
Zorko stood still. The feather no longer sparked.
The vault had gone quiet. Not empty, just quieter. A reverent hush, as if the air was tired of being misunderstood.
He approached the pedestal again, boots soft on stone. The egg sat calm, no longer twitching, no longer defensive. Just present.
Tabitha watched, unchanged except for her eyes, which had softened. Or perhaps just become more certain.
Zorko cleared his throat. Once. Then again, more poetically.
“I have seen relics that burn,” he said, voice lower now. Not from silence, but from respect. “I have cradled blades that sing and once held a jar that vomited bees in protest.”
He hovered the feather above the egg. Not to touch, but in homage. No sparks. No pulse.
“But this,” he said, “this is not a storm. Not yet. Not quite.”
He looked to Tabitha. She said nothing.
He turned to the orb, raised the feather, and intoned:
“Final appraisal: Twenty-five gold in mistaken wrath. Seven thousand in cyclical burden. And one priceless stillness entrusted by a bird made of memory.”
The orb flickered. Once. Then again. Then still.
Tabitha stepped forward and gathered the egg. The silk folded around it like wings.
She looked at Zorko. “You told me something new.”
Her smile was small. But real.
Then she turned and left, the scent of herbs lingering behind her.
Zorko watched her go. The feather lowered. The orb dimmed.
And in the vault where winds once quarreled, all arguments finally stopped.
Entered by: 0x6424…79B4
Zorko’s Arcane Appraisals
The Vault of Broken Oaths
"Welcome," Zorko whispered, as the door of the Vault groaned open behind him, exhaling a breath colder than regret. He stepped inside like one might enter an abandoned chapel, aware that anything loud might wake something ancient and unfinished.
The Vault of Broken Oaths was not vast, but it felt endless. A sunless hall wrapped in stone, veined with frost and lined with hollow plaques that once bore the names of treaties, pacts, and blood-bound promises now long decayed. Some had been carved out. Others had simply vanished.
A soft light hovered behind him. The orb. Usually buoyant, now it floated lower than usual, pulsing faintly like it had the flu.
Zorko removed his gloves, even as the chill bit down to the bone. His phoenix feather flickered to life in his hand, glowing a soft red, but only at half its usual confidence. It drooped slightly, unsure.
He cleared his throat, voice quiet but ceremonial.
“We are here,” he said, “in a place where loyalty was embalmed. Where every oath that shattered echoes like glass in slow motion.”
He moved toward the center dais: a stone pedestal etched with spiraling runes that curled inward like a language trying to eat itself. He placed his feather on it.
“It is not often,” he said, “that an object appraises you.”
He looked directly at the orb. The light cast long shadows across his face.
“Today’s artifact was not forged. It was formulated, by minds who believed the soul could be measured. That death was merely another variable. That identity was a system.”
He gestured behind him with one hand, palm upward, as if conducting silence itself.
“We appraise many things: charms, bones, relics with egos, weapons with tantrums. But today...” He paused. “Today, we are going to speak with a ring.”
The orb flickered once. A sudden cold swept across the Vault like a tide of withheld apologies.
Frost traced the pedestal. The feather twitched, shedding a single ember that sizzled and died before it touched the ground.
Zorko turned to the hallway behind him.
“And the one who brings it is known. Feared. Recently reconstructed.”
He tilted his head, listening to nothing.
“He will arrive in his own time. Guests like this often do.”
Then he looked straight into the viewer.
“This is my first ever appraisal of recursion.”
He smiled faintly.
“And possibly my last.”
From the corridor came the sound of approaching silence. Not footsteps. Not echoes. A disagreement with reality.
The orb dimmed. The feather rolled slightly on the pedestal, curling away from the approaching presence.
And then he arrived.
Horned Phantasm Caligula of the Smell stepped through the misted threshold, dressed in an aristocrat’s two-piece suit that no tailor alive would claim. It was stitched from the color of lost elegance and decayed nobility.
Glowing eyes, rimmed in fireless light, regarded the room with amusement. His horns curved backward like memory denied. In one hand, he held a black vial, penumbra potion, swirling like remorse caught in glass.
At his side walked Veil, the ghost fox. Its translucent fur trailed like candle smoke. It regarded Zorko with the expression of someone who’d seen him die in a past life and wasn’t terribly impressed.
Zorko bowed stiffly. “Caligula.”
The phantasm’s voice was velvet scraped with rust. “Zorko.”
Zorko gestured to the pedestal. “I believe you brought something... inappropriate.”
Caligula’s mouth didn’t smile, but something deeper did. He raised his hand, and with it, the Ring of Souls.
The moment it emerged, the Vault responded. The air curled inward. Light refracted wrong. The cyclone inside the red gem began to turn, counter to time itself.
Zorko took a sharp breath.
“You wear it bare,” he said. “No wrapping. No seal.”
“It would sulk otherwise,” Caligula replied. “It is, like me, accustomed to skin.”
Zorko reached forward, hesitating. “May I...”
“You may regret,” Caligula offered, extending his hand.
The ring slipped off his finger far too willingly. Zorko caught it, barely, and immediately recoiled.
“Cold,” he hissed. “Ice without mercy. This isn’t temperature. It’s refusal.”
His eyes met the cyclone. It spun faster.
He blinked. Once. Twice. Then...
“Did you hear something?”
Caligula tilted his head. Veil growled.
Zorko leaned in closer to the ring. His breath steamed against it. The cyclone deepened, turning red into blackhole red, that terrible shade that implies falling toward never.
“It’s calling,” Zorko whispered. “But not from the ring. It’s calling into me.”
He dropped it. It landed on the pedestal with a sound like memory hitting water.
The Vault fell silent again. Only the whispering remained. Too faint for the orb to hear.
But Zorko heard it.
And he could not unhear.
He stared at the ring where it sat.
The cyclone had slowed, but the gem still pulsed faintly with that inner churn, like a storm eye that blinked only when you didn’t.
He didn’t touch it again. Instead, he circled the pedestal like a historian afraid of a footnote.
“The Ring of Souls,” he said slowly, voice resonant but unsure. “Crafted in the era of logic. Before the Singularity. Before meaning became optional.”
Caligula raised an eyebrow and took a casual step closer.
Veil padded forward, sniffed the air near the pedestal, then sneezed. A puff of pale smoke, as if allergic to lies.
“Crafted, yes,” Zorko continued. “But not designed. This wasn’t made. It was converged. A consequence of intellect turned inward. The Athenaeum did not build it. They witnessed it.”
Caligula nodded, absently swirling the penumbra potion. “That is why they feared it. Not for what it did, but for what it might undo.”
“And now,” Zorko said, gesturing vaguely to the horned guest, “it undoes... you?”
“No,” Caligula said, voice low. “It remembers me.”
Zorko tilted his head. “Explain.”
Caligula approached the pedestal slowly. “It is not a ring of souls. That name is a mercy. A euphemism.” He hovered his hand over the ring, not quite touching. “It does not contain the soul. It returns you to it. Not as you wish to be, but as you truly are.”
“And what are you?” Zorko asked.
Caligula’s eyes flared. For a moment, he looked not like a guest, but like something the Vault itself was trying to forget.
Then he smiled. Or bared teeth. It was hard to tell.
“I am the unfinished sentence at the end of a betrayal.”
The orb flickered. Veil bristled.
“And the ring?” Zorko asked again, more quietly now.
“The ring remembers every user,” Caligula said. “And it wants them back. Not their power. Not their memory. Their selves.”
Zorko shivered. Not from fear, but from cold. The ring radiated frost now, its own atmosphere of denial.
“No wonder it’s not safe,” he whispered. “It isn’t worn. It wears.”
“Exactly,” Caligula said. “It turns the wearer into their most eternal self. And what is eternal in most people, Zorko?”
Zorko didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
The ring pulsed again.
A whisper slipped from it, like a breath escaping bone.
It spoke no words, but it sounded exactly like Zorko’s voice.
Saying something he hadn’t said. Yet.
The echo still lingered.
It hadn’t been a sound, not really. More like the aftertaste of a sentence. Something that hadn’t quite happened, but would. If Zorko wasn’t careful.
He took a deliberate step back. His feather trembled in his hand. Not from fear, he claimed, but from resonance.
“It mimicked me,” he said slowly. “That’s... new.”
“Not mimicry,” Caligula murmured, as if addressing a stubborn student. “It heard you across time. That whisper was not a trick. It was a memory, one you’ve yet to make.”
Veil let out a low, guttural sound. Not quite a growl. More like the sound a fox makes when sensing a second version of itself behind the mirror.
“It takes,” Zorko said softly. “More than souls, then.”
“Yes,” Caligula replied. “It collects the inevitable: past, future, possible. It stores the true you, distilled. And once it finds that version of you, it never lets it go.”
Zorko gave the ring a wary glance, then a colder one to the orb.
“Do we have wards against that kind of intrusion?”
The orb hesitated, then dimmed. Not an encouraging answer.
“You shouldn’t have brought this here,” Zorko muttered.
“Oh, I should have,” Caligula said. Suddenly his voice bore weight. Gravity. “Because every vault needs a reminder. You cannot catalogue power without courting it. You cannot observe the soul without risking your own.”
Zorko turned. His robes brushed the ground like a soft reprimand.
“So what’s your appraisal, Zorko?” Caligula asked.
Zorko glanced at the feather in his hand, then at the swirling red gem.
He stepped forward, closer than he should have. He leaned in. Not to the ring, but to the silence it radiated.
Then he raised the feather and spoke, low and firm:
“This is not jewelry. This is an unfinished argument between life and death. A keepsake for the cosmos. A snare for selves. It does not grant power. It consolidates identity. It is what you are when nothing else is left. And it has never once returned what it was given.”
Behind him, the orb pulsed once. Then dimmed.
Caligula smiled.
Veil sat, smug.
Zorko lowered his feather and whispered:
“Final appraisal: The Ring of Souls. A container not of souls, but of conclusions. It is not cursed. It is certain.”
The ring pulsed. The gem’s cyclone spun faster for just a moment.
Then it stopped.
Not like it ran out of energy.
But like it had heard enough.
Zorko didn’t touch it again.
Caligula did not reclaim it.
It simply vanished.
Back to the Vault.
Back to the unfinished story it keeps inside.
Entered by: 0x6424…79B4
